Dark Knight Before Christmas
by ordinaryguy2
Summary: The ghosts of Thomas and Martha Wayne are given a look into the life of their son thanks to an angel. By Carycomic


**DARK KNIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS  
**  
 _by Carycomic_

 _A Batman/TBAA crossover serving as a one-shot prequel to BvP:TNG_

 _Also Carycomic actually had this written up and sent to me on December 22. I have been derelict in my duties in checking my mail. Sorry all around._

 _ **Usual disclaimer regarding characters and concepts:**_ _if you recognize them, I don't own them.  
_  
 **GOTHAM CITY, USA  
(JUNE 23, 1972)**

Thomas Wayne was the first to get up.

"Martha? Are you all right?"

His wife of eleven years weakly nodded as she was helped to her feet.

"W-Where's Bruce?" she stammered.

"He's right over there," replied a third voice.

The couple spun about to see a fair-haired young man in his late twenties, and wearing a white suit, staring at them. A somewhat sad smile on his face.

"Who are you?' demanded Thomas.

"My name is Andrew, Dr. Wayne. And, while I know you won't initially believe this, I. . .am an angel. Here to guide you and your wife to Heaven."

Both Thomas and Martha stared at him as if he were insane! Their mouths hanging open in speechless astonishment. It was the good doctor, however, who recovered first.

"What kind of sick joke is this? My wife and I were just mugged, for God's sake! And our son. . ."

". . .is right behind you, " Andrew interrupted his tirade: "Just as I already told you."

The couple turned around. . .only to once more become speechless with horrified amazement. For there, on the pavement of the alley, lay two blood-soaked bodies! Their ten-year-old son, Bruce, standing between them with tears streaming from his eyes like a pair of miniature waterfalls. His whole body almost completely enshrouded by a trench coat that had apparently been placed around him by a much older man wearing a police officer's badge on the lapel pocket of his sport jacket.

"T-Thomas," stammered Martha. "Those bodies. It's. . ."

"It's us," he grimly finished for her. "So, I wasn't just having a bad dream on regaining consciousness. We really were shot and killed!"

Andrew slowly nodded. "Your son was spared only because the gunman's accomplice thought he heard a foot patrolman coming and got scared. Now, please, let us go."

"But, what about our son?!" demanded Martha. "He's an orphan, now. Who will take care of him?"

"Your butler, Alfred Pennyworth, will become his legal guardian," replied Andrew, before adding. "And I'm sure I don't need to reassure you two how conscientious he is, in his duties!"

"That's true," countered Thomas. "But, with all due respect to him, there's a big difference to running a household and raising a child."

"He's right!" exclaimed Martha. "Isn't there some way you could show us what's going to happen to him, now that we're gone?"

Andrew closed his eyes and looked upward into the night sky. A moment later, he reopened them. The smile reappearing on his face slightly more joyful than the first one he had worn.

"I've consulted with my. . .immediate supervisor. She has given me permission to take you thirty years into the future to see what life is like for your son."

Whereupon, a bright light shone down on all three figures, temporarily blinding the Waynes. When they could see again, they found that they were no longer in the alley. Rather, they appeared to be in a grove of pine trees!

"Where. . .?" began Thomas.

"A Christmas tree farm, near Wayne Manor," explained Andrew: "It's Christmas Eve, 2002. And what you are about to see might terrify you, at first. But, please don't be _too_ alarmed. For, in the immortal words of Charles Dickens: _'We are but shadows and they do not know we are here.'_ "

That was when the strange trio heard the snap of a twig as something approached them. Thomas and Martha clinging to each other tightly when they saw what had made that sound. Namely; an ambulatory scarecrow! They stared in shock as the nightmarish figure stopped to look around. It then dropped the burlap sack it had been carrying over its right shoulder in an apparent travesty of Santa Claus. From that sack, it then removed several seltzer bottles. Each one containing some kind of weirdly-colored liquid.

"Season's Greetings, Professor Crane."

All four figures spun about. The Waynes gasping, in unwitting unison with the scarecrow, at the new arrival that stepped out of the darkness.

"Batman! What are you doing here?"

The figure the Scarecrow was addressing was, indeed, dressed like a bat. The latter even had the silhouette of one as the centerpiece of a yellow, circular emblem on some kind of breastplate!

"I compliment on you on your choice of disguise," said the caped newcomer: "It helped you avoid detection when you were contaminating all that cannabis being illicitly grown, in Gotham University's agricultural extension cornfield, just before Halloween. But, once all that cannabis had been confiscated, by the police, you had to go into hiding elsewhere. In order to continue your pheromonal pollution of the general public! And what better place to do that than Gotham's largest supplier of Christmas trees?"

"You think you're so smart," snarled the Scarecrow. "Let's see if you're clever enough to avoid being sliced to ribbons!"

Whereupon, the former began attacking the Batman, using a combination of Chinese white crane kung fu and Japanese kama-jutsu!

* * * * *

Yet, this strange Caped Crusader not only appeared to know these two martial arts, as well. He also appeared to be well-versed Sun-style tai chi chuan! A substyle of tai chi that incorporated the equally "soft" arts of hsing-i and pa kua. Thomas recognized this because he had become a fascinated practitioner of the substyle while learning the Chinese medical art of acupuncture.

Consequently, in less time than it takes to tell, the Scarecrow was laying on the ground. Veritably hog-tied with two pairs of bat-shaped handcuffs!

Twenty minutes later, the tree farm was swarming with city and state police.

"I don't understand," declared a bespectacled man in his mid-fifties (whom the Waynes heard referred to as "Commissioner Gordon"). "What did he hope to gain by spritzing all these trees with his 'fear-o-mone' at this late date? All the Christmas tree vendors have closed up shop, now! The ones he hadn't already _forced_ into closing, I mean."

"He was going to set fire to the remainder of the tree farm," replied the Batman. "With the current prevailing winds, the tainted smoke would've drifted straight toward Gotham City. Driving most of the populace mad by tomorrow morning!"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the commissioner. "Well, thank Heaven you were finally able to track him down."

* * * * *

At this point, there was another flash of blinding white light. When it subsided, the Waynes found themselves in a cavern with slightly dimmer lighting, surrounded by all kinds of advanced technology.

"Look at this place, Thomas!" exclaimed Martha. "It's like something out of an old science-fiction movie serial."

"If that's the case," replied the doctor. "Who are we going to see next; Buster Crabbe or Richard Jory?"

Andrew could not help grinning. "You'll see."

He was right. Within two minutes, a car that looked to be fifty years ahead of its time came roaring to a stop atop a huge rotating dish in the floor. One similar in both appearance and function to those used in railroad round houses!

"Welcome home, Master Bruce. I take it tonight's foray yielded satisfactory results?"

The Waynes looked at each other.

"Master Bruce?" echoed Martha.

"It couldn't be," replied Thomas.

"I couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present, Alfred," said the Batman (as he unwittingly unmasked in front of his parents' spirits).

* * * * *

Thomas and Martha wished they had heard wrong. But, they could not doubt their senses. The sexagenarian in the black tie-and-tails tuxedo was, indeed, Alfred Pennyworth. The once-younger man who, in 1972, had just replaced his late father Jarvis as their butler. And the forty-something man he was helping out of the bat-like costume that seemed to be made of plastic armor was, indeed, their son and only child. There was something about the latter's eyes that he and Martha, as parents, just could not dispute!

"Andrew!" the good doctor exclaimed. "How. . .? What. . .? Why. . .?"

"The night after your funerals, he made a vow at his bedside. A vow that he would never let what happened to him happen to anyone else! He, in effect, declared a life-long war on crime. A war that he has fought as non-lethally as possible, to be sure! But, a war, nonetheless. It hasn't been a one-man war, however. Along the way, he's made some staunch friends and allies."

"Are these so-called ' _friends_ ' costumed vigilantes, like him?" asked Martha.

"Actually," replied their angelic escort, ". . .most people refer to him as a ' _superhero_.' "

"A what? ? ?" the couple chorused in unison.

"Come! I'll show you."

Yet, again, there was a flash of blinding white light. This time, however, they found themselves in a private study. One in which there was a fireplace with their wedding portrait hanging over it. Next to that was a grandfather clock. . .which now opened outwards to their right, like a supermarket door! And, through it, emerged Bruce and Alfred. The former now wearing a navy-blue blazer over a black turtleneck sweater (with matching socks and loafers) offset by a pair of khaki slacks.

Bruce then closed the secret panel. Resetting the hands on the clock face from 10:47 to eight minutes before twelve. Following which, he and Alfred left the study (closely followed by Andrew and his two spiritual charges). Consequently, they saw two couples, in the ballroom of the manor, jitterbugging to "Rockin' Round The Christmas Tree." The younger couple consisted of a blonde twenty-something girl holding on to an equally young man with reddish-brown hair. While the slightly older couple consisted of a blonde woman in her mid-thirties dancing with a thirty-something man with black hair starting to go partially gray.

Watching the latter was a couple in their early forties. The man, wearing a tuxedo without tails (offset by matching black-framed eyeglasses); while the woman wore a sleeveless evening gown of silvery blue (and her salt-and-pepper hair in a bun).

Andrew pointed to the youngsters, first.

"Richard Grayson and Barbara Clark. 'Dick and Babs,' to their friends and classmates. Dick became Bruce's ward after a tragedy similar to his own cost the young man his birth-parents and older brother. While Babs is Alfred's ' _niece_ ' in the sense that he once mentored her mother as a member of Big Brothers and Sisters of America!"

"That's why they now help your son in his extra-legal crusade for justice. Justice that, in certain extreme circumstances, cannot be meted out by the courts and police. And they do this under the pseudonyms of ' _Robin_ ' and ' _Batgirl_ ,' respectively."

"The couple next to them are the Malvernes from Midvale. Ethan and Linda. Linda, however, is not from Earth. She was born on the planet Krypton as Kara Zor-El! But, when Krypton's sun went nova, destroying that planet, her scientist-parents sent their entire hometown into what they call a _'pocket dimension_.' With Kara emerging from that dimension, into our world, less than twenty years ago."

"Her cousin Kal-El, who is also Kryptonian, came to Earth longer ago than that. Being raised, from infancy, by a Kansas farming couple named Kent! He and Kara have amazing powers as a result of Earth's yellow sun and lighter gravity. Powers that they use for the benefit of the less fortunate members of humanity. That's why the news media (particularly, Lois Lane of THE DAILY PLANET in Metropolis) have dubbed them ' _Superman_ ' and ' _Supergirl_ ,' respectively!"

It was at this point that Andrew fell silent as they watched Bruce approach the bespectacled extra-terrestrial.

"Enjoying the party, Clark?"

The expatriate Kryptonian turned and grinned.

"Almost as much as Kara. It's not everyday that someone gets their hometown un-shrunk!"

"Did the Feds give you any grief over you and she taking the microcosm away from them?"

Clark Kent shook his head. "Not after we agreed that they could keep Brainiac's remains, in exchange. Well, that; and the promise that there'd be no expose's in THE DAILY PLANET about what truly goes on at Area 52!"

Suddenly, all the clocks in the ballroom began to chime midnight.

"Hey-hey! It's Christmas Day," exclaimed Dick.

"Merry Christmas!" Barbara immediately shouted in response.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS!" echoed everyone else (each of them reaching for wine glasses that Alfred had conveniently placed nearby).

"Merry Christmas to you, Mom and Dad," muttered Bruce and Clark in unison.

"Merry Christmas, son," whispered Martha (her ethereal eyes trying to tear up, out of pure instinct).

Thomas looked at Andrew.

"Is he truly happy?"

Andrew considered the answer to that, very carefully.

"He'll never truly get over the pain of losing you both. But, so long as he can keep that solemn promise he made, thirty years ago, he will be satisfied, more often than not. You could even say that, in emulating a creature of darkness, he helps keep darkness away from a good number of people who truly don't deserve to be touched by it!"

"So long as he's not unhappy, then," replied Martha. "I can go with you with my mind at ease."

"Same here," added Thomas.

Andrew nodded and smiled. Whereupon, there was one last flash of blinding light. One that seemed to be imitated in the twinkling of a certain star in the Christmas sky.

 **THE END**

Merry Xmas, everybody!

 **Author's Note:**

 _SUPERGIRL, starring Helen Slater in the title role, was released by the Salkind family (in co-operation with TriStar and Columbia-EMI-Warner) in 1984. While "Area 52" (according to 2003's LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION) is the top-secret facility where the American government imprisons the sci-fi movie monsters of yore (such as Triffids and the Man from Planet X)._


End file.
